Hark
by Lassar
Summary: It's Christmas Eve. Sara and Jake are called to the scene of a bizarre ritual murder. Spoilers for 'Legion'.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Written for the 'Witchblade Bah-humbug Contest' at Mythtime. Takes place after 'Legion', with minor spoilers for the same.I own nothing and am making no profit. (that should be obvious from the state of my bank account) The rules for the contest are as follows:

**Quotes that must be used verbatim within the story: **

**1. "How do you know that's not just a really, really big lemon snowcone?"**

**2. "Jingle this.**_**" or **_**"Holly jolly, my ass." (Author's choice on this one)**

**3. "Imagine what **_**that **_**would look like with tinsel dangling from it."**

**Items that must appear in the story:**

**Fuzzy pink bunny slippers**

**A**** plumber named Duie Pyle**

******A can of cheese whiz.**

**Visit the website, check out the other contestants, maybe try your hand. We'd love to have you.**

**www mythtime com/IANspiration/xmasstory/xmasstoryone htm**

**(just replace the spaces with periods to create the link)**

**Chapter 1 Bah Humbug **

Snow was falling, covering New York with a pristine white blanket. Too bad the city was still filthy underneath… Sara stared out the window of the patrol car and tried not to sigh. It had been a long day, and it wasn't over yet. She was stuck pulling a double, partly because her captain hated her guts, and partly because of the annual holiday-created manpower shortages.

Not that Sara minded working through Christmas. Let some poor schmuck with a buttload of brats have the time off.

"… best time of the year. I don't know if there'll be snow, but have a cup of cheer. Have a holl-"

"Damn it Jake! What did I tell you about the radio?" Sara growled as she reached over and flipped the knob until the soothing, at least to her ears, sounds of Megadeath filled the car again. "Holly jolly, my ass."

"Awww, come on Sara." Jake whined, "It's Christmas. Why can't we listen to Christmas music?"

"Because I hate it."

"Christmas or Christmas music?" Jake arched his brows upward in question.

"Yes." Sara crossed her arms and glared at her rookie partner. He was being an even bigger idiot than usual.

"You're a real Grinch, you know that?"

Sara rolled her eyes, "Oh please. The green guy caved like the wuss that he was. I, on the other hand, am still a card-carrying member of 'The Bah Humbug Club'."

"I don't get it. Why do you hate Christmas so much?"

"Gee, I don't know," Sara paused as if giving it serious thought, then continued with contempt dripping from every word, "maybe because it's the biggest rip-off in the history of mankind?"

"It's the celebration of the birth of Christ." Jake shot back, appalled at the blatant negativity coming from the other side of the car.

"Who was born when?" Sara raised a brow, "I'll give you a hint, it wasn't December."

"Ok, ok, yeah, the historians say he had to have been born somewhere in August or September, but it's the thought…"

Sara cut him off, "That counts? Really? Somehow I don't connect a guy born in a barn with a huge sale at Macy's."

"So your problem is the commercialization of a spiritual event?" Somehow that wasn't the answer Jake had been expecting. Sara had never struck him as particularly religious.

"Shouldn't it be? I mean really Jake, what are we going to spend the whole night doing?"

"Patrolling?"

"And why are we patrolling?" Sara asked in the same tone used to speak to very small children.

Not sure where this was going, he gave the most obvious answer, "Because people will be committing crimes?"

"Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner." With the carnival barker impression Sara was doing winner sounded more like whi-nahh. "Give that man a crappy butter cookie Santa with red sprinkles!"

"Ewwww, those things are nasty," Jake shuddered in distaste.

"So's the entire human race." Sara replied flatly. "That's why two thousand years after the so-called 'Prince of Peace' was born; we're still slaughtering each other."

"Harsh Pez, real harsh," Jake sighed, "And not exactly true. There are good people out there. It's just that our job doesn't bring us into contact with very many of them."

Sara stared at him as if he had sprouted a second bottlebrush head. "If the angels really came to town, I think they would come up with fewer good people than they found in Sodom."

Jake tried to think back to Sunday bible school for the number, but came up with a big fat blank. To cover his ignorance, he glossed over the count, "Just because you don't,"

There was a momentary flare of heat from Sara's wrist, and then her partner's voice faded behind the strength of a Witchblade induced vision. The falling snow became feathers, as brilliant and sharp edged as glass. Some of them were edged with rubies.

No, not rubies, blood.


	2. Chapter 2

"Yo Pez! Are you even listening to me?"

The vision faded, only the nagging sense of something horribly wrong lingering in her mind. Sara shook her head and looked around nervously, "Uh sorry, just drifted off there for a minute. Long shift."

Sara tried for a laugh, but it fell flat. How long had she been out of it, and what the Hell did the Witchblade want now?

"I guess that means you missed Dispatch giving us a 10-83." Jake looked at her with concern. A tired cop was a careless cop, and as out of it as she was, they really didn't have any business going into possibly dangerous situations.

Sara rubbed her face with one hand, doing her best to scrub the lingering fog out of her head. "Do we have time to grab fresh coffee? I need to jump-start my brain."

"I don't think the body is going anywhere. Keep your eye out for a 7-11 or something; I don't drive down here much. I don't know where one might be."

"So where is this corpse anyway?" Sara asked casually while watching the storefronts for anything that served coffee. They were getting into the Village, there had to be something open.

"You really are out of it aren't you?"

The question was largely rhetorical, so Sara ignored it. "You already call the Meat Wagon?"

Jake winced, Meat Wagon being the extremely politically incorrect moniker for an ambulance called on a dead body. "No, we aren't supposed to call them until we've examined the scene."

"Normally that's true, but Christmas Eve? If we call now, they might show up about the time we're done. That way we don't have to sit on the corpse for a couple hours waiting on them."

"Right." Jake just nodded, knowing that if he had suggested violating procedure to expedite a call, he would have gotten his ass chewed. Instead of commenting, he concentrated on the passing street names. They should be getting close to the address Dispatch had given him.

The studious watching also gave him an excuse not to radio Dispatch. If Sara wanted the request made, she could do it herself. Jake was not going to take the heat if Dante decided to take exception to the call. After several minutes of blaring heavy metal music, which was rather obviously not broken by any calls in to Dispatch, they came to MacDougal Street.

Sara tilted in her seat as they slid a little turning a particularly sharp corner. An empty can of Cheese Whiz rolled under her feet, reminding her that her last meal hadn't really been what anyone would call nutritious. She really needed caffeine and food, but the meal should probably wait until after dealing with the body. A full stomach and the smell of corpse never went well together, and she was so not going to hurl in front of Rookie-boy.

She jerked her thoughts away from food as she read the next signpost. Just a few more blocks down and they would be at Washington Square Park. A dead body there would hardly be a surprise, even if the area had cleaned up a lot since Vice made it their pet project.

Half the surrounding neighborhoods were still pretty seedy and the vagrant population was thicker than pigeons during warmer months. In the winter, only those with absolutely nowhere indoors to go flopped in parks. They froze to death more often than not.

By the time the car stopped at a red brick building just before the park, Sara had the report half-written in her head. She had been on this kind of call loads of times. It was still kind of sad, and horrifying in a distant kind of way, that a human being could die of exposure right in the middle of civilization. It seemed like the ultimate in social neglect back when she'd been a rookie, but she had gone on to see so much worse that her empathy was as remote as the stars.

"Hey Pez, where are you going?" Jake called as Sara started toward the park.

"That way," Sara jerked a thumb at the disreputable little square of winter-dead trees, scrub, and trash. Even the snow did not improve the view.

"Uhm," Jake ran a hand through his hair as he stalled, trying to think of a diplomatic response.

After a long moment of staring, Sara understood what he hadn't said. A blush mantled her cheeks, "Where are we going then?"

"Across the street. See the other Greek revival, the one with the plumbing van in front of it?"

"Got it." Sara paused for a minute, stared at the white van, and then sighed. "Look, it's been a helluva day, and I'm seriously coffee deprived. Just what did Dispatch say when they put us on this call?"

"The body was found by one Duie Pyle, plumber, while trying to find out what had caused the building's sewer main to back up."

"Please don't tell me that our body was stuffed in a shit pipe," Sara sighed, not looking forward to slogging around in feces looking for clues. Wouldn't that be a perfect ending to the day?

Jake twitched, the thought obviously not appealing to him either. "Nope. He found the body while following the pipes down past the foundation."

"Well that's something at least." Sara glanced over at Jake, who was very carefully not saying something else. "All right, out with it. What's the bad news?"

"Mr. Pyle did say that the victim was dressed as an angel." Jake added reluctantly.

Feeling vindicated for her earlier comments, Pez hummed a few bars of 'It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas'.

"That's not funny." Jake protested her gallows humor.

Sara didn't bother to reply as she climbed the four steps that led from the cracked sidewalk to the door. Homicides were never funny, but if you didn't find something to keep your spirits up the job would grind you to dust.


	3. Chapter 3

Just as Sara raised her hand to knock, the door swung open. Standing just inside the door was a tall, nearly emaciated blond male. Junkie, her instincts whispered, or recently enough ex that it didn't matter. His eyes were the color of washed-out denim and wide with fear.

"I didn't do nothin," The protest was sullen, automatic. He had recognized her just as she had him.

"I bet you say that to all the girls," Sara couldn't resist saying.

"Just the ones with badges," He replied, her humorous response, however black, relaxing him enough to reply in kind.

"Well, since you aren't doing anything, lead me to the body." Sara didn't waste any fake sympathy or political correctness; there wasn't any point. He'd seen enough on the streets not to need either one.

The house was old, built during the early 1800's and remodeled, from the looks of things, into apartments during the bohemian movement of the early sixties. The detectives followed their guide toward the back of the house, and down through what might have been a cold-room or a pantry.

"So Mr. Pyle, what can you tell us," Jake asked as he ducked the pipe bolted to the oak lintel.

"I ain't the plumber. He's up with the building manager, arguing whether or not he's getting paid for the call, since he didn't actually fix anything."

"We'll need to speak with him. Make sure he doesn't leave," Sara wasted a glare on the back of his dirty blonde head.

It was better than thinking about the way this place was playing on her nerves. Each step felt colder than the last, as if she was descending through ice water. The walls seemed to press in, the hum of the electric lights unnaturally loud. Every time Sara moved forward, it was an act of will.

"Yeah, yeah," He replied, oblivious to the detective's ire or the ill will radiating from the walls. He continued to lead them deeper under ground. After several minutes the stairwell opened out into another room. The pipes followed the wall down to a newer, concrete rimmed hole and steel ladder. "This is as far as I go. Body is at the bottom."

"Thanks." Sara said sourly.

"De nada," the blonde shrugged his thin shoulders and started back up the stairs.

"Well, I suppose this is why we get paid the big bucks," Jake tried to joke as he hesitated by the steel rungs.

"Yep." Sara agreed, ignoring the hint of unease in her partner's voice. What could she say anyway? The hair on the back of her neck was standing straight up. She did not want to go down there. Nope, no reassurances about climbing down that hole came to mind.

The rungs were cold, and a little slick from condensation under her hands. Sara flexed her fingers and looked down over her shoulders at the dimly lit service shaft. The body wasn't getting any fresher, they needed to get down there and do their jobs. Face screwed up in a scowl, the detective started down the hole.

If Sara had thought it cold going before, it was positively frigid now. Her breath plumed out white and the rungs were dusted with hoarfrost. Jake was blocking the light above her, making the shaft seem even darker. A sickly sweet smell, reminding her of vomit and sickness, wafted up.

The smell triggered another quick flicker of vision. Cramped in darkness, no room to move, the moans of the sick and the clank of chain. Shit and blood and death. A faint hint of salt under it all, and a monotonous swaying that should have been soothing but wasn't. Then the feeling was gone. Only the cold biting her palms kept Sara descending.

Finally, after far longer than either of them liked, they came to the bottom of the ladder. The light was even worse down here, only two naked bulbs illuminating an arcane mix of pipes and hulking equipment. With a muttered curse Sara pulled her MagLite out of her jacket pocket and thumbed the switch.

The powerful beam cut through the dark, illuminating a patch of stone on the opposite wall. Sara swung the beam around, trying to get a feel for the size of the room. The light bounced around, showing mostly natural stone. There was a long crack running down one wall, glistening with moisture, but that was the only opening. The remaining walls were solid. Whoever the murderer had been, they had to have come and gone by the ladder.

"City didn't waste much money back then." Sara muttered, and then winced. Her voice sounded far to loud in the darkened chamber.

"Yeah, I'll bet we just climbed down the old well shaft for the house. Look at the water marks on the wall; this had to have been a natural aquifer that the city drilled through." Jake paused for a moment, "Or it dried up on its own and then they connected it to the new city line."

"That's all very fascinating," Her tone said plainly that it wasn't really. Sara was all set to add a scathing comment, but the beam from her flashlight moved over something white, half-hidden by the bulk of one of the pumps.

Boots clicking on stone, Sara moved toward that spot of brilliant white, which turned out to be the edge of a wing. She stopped, shone her light around the ground in front of her to make sure she wasn't about to track through any evidence, and then continued forward.

"Oh God," Jake whispered in a voice made thready with horror.

Bound spread-eagled, pun not intended, was a tall, well-muscled Caucasian. He was blonde, the eyes might have been blue, but it was hard to tell with the way they were filmed over and yellowy in the glare of the flashlight. One wing splayed outward, the other at an unnatural angle, clearly broken and tattered as if a beast had chewed it. His mouth, throat, and chest were covered in clotted reddish black. It looked like he had vomited all the blood in his body.

Although it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, Sara took another step closer, and another. She couldn't do her job from twenty feet away, as much as she might wish that she could. The closer she got, the clearer the details became.

There was gilt embroidery on the robes and where the cloth stopped its fall, the floor was engraved with similar symbols. Well, on second glance, only vaguely so. Looking too long at the runes carved into the floor made her brain feel like it was full of maggots. She averted her eyes from the symbols and continued her circuit of the crime scene.

Taken abstractly, it wasn't the worst thing Sara had seen, but somehow she was still sickened. The very air was thick with wrongness, as if something pure had been defiled.

"And so it has."

The satisfied malice in the voice that oozed out of the darkness made Sara drop one hand to her gun. She thumbed open the safety snap on her holster, ready to clear leather. Sara looked around wildly; searching for the source, until she realized Jake was staring at her in confusion. He hadn't heard a thing.

"Thought I heard something," Sara answered the questioning look. It was the truth. If Jake thought she meant some little sound and not a disembodied voice, so what? He was looking just as spooked as she felt. Telling him that she was hearing voices would not help either of them.

"Hey Pez? Is that… hair?" The hesitation was heavy with the word Jake didn't want to say.

Sara focused on the bindings, which she had assumed were some kind of hemp, more closely. Fed through iron rings that had been set into the floor, and knotted around each limb, was loosely woven rope. A second, more intent, look showed the fibers to be different colors. There were sections of blonde, black, and even a little grey amid the more plentiful brown.

"They were the first to fall." Again the voice came out of the dark. "The brokers of misery are now slaves themselves. Is the irony not delightful?"

For a moment Sara thought the Witchblade was playing with her mind again, but Jake jumped beside her. His flashlight bobbled as he scythed it through the dark, looking for the source. Skin prickling with premonition, Sara turned, but there was nothing behind her.

When Sara turned back to the direction she had been facing, he was suddenly there. Wizened, dusky skin wrinkled and filthy, ancient clothing rotting on what had once been a much larger frame. His hair hung in greyish dreadlocks, framing eyes yellow with madness and disease.

There was no time to react, to show the fear or revulsion she felt. His hand swung upward in that instant of realization that he was there, backhanding the detective with more force than his ancient form should have been capable of.

Sara went backwards to the stone floor, vision black, the taste of blood in her mouth and the ache of new-formed bruises. For a moment she just lay there, trying to remember how to breathe around the pain. She staggered to her feet and shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Damn, it felt like she had been hit by a freight train.


	4. Chapter 4

The near-deafening retort of a weapon fired in an enclosed area added to the ringing in Sara's ears but pulled her attention back to business. Jake was on his knees, shoulders shaking a little with the strength of his coughs, but his weapon was still in hand. Sara followed the line of that extended arm but saw nothing.

"Did you hit him?" Sara staggered, still a little punch-drunk, to her partner.

"Yeah," His reply was nearly lost in the harsh coughing. "Center mass. Didn't go down though. Must be wearing a vest."

"Or is hopped up on PCP." Sara wasn't convinced that was the answer, not with the steady burn of the Witchblade on her wrist, but it sounded better than what she was thinking. There was something about those eyes…

"Fits with how hard he hit you," Jake wheezed in agreement. That would make more sense, considering that there was no way he would have missed seeing a vest, not with his shirt shredded like that. Jake had seen an addict take a full clip in the chest once; the guy had kept coming long after anyone else would have dropped.

"Can you stand up? If this guy is Dusted, he won't even notice a few bullet holes and we're between him and the only way out." Sara kept her flashlight moving, hoping to see the bastard before he could get close enough to hit her this time.

"I think so." Jake pushed himself up, got halfway to his feet, overbalanced, and went downward again.

Sara barely grabbed him in time to keep Jake from a painful face plant. He was burning up; the line of his body against hers was like a brand. "You're hot," the observation was more of an accusation.

"You just now noticed? I'm crushed," Jake teased, but it was a weak rejoinder. He was sick and they both knew it.

"Shut up. No, on second thought, call for backup." Sara paused and added, "And an ambulance."

"Tried that while you were down. There's too much interference, couldn't get through."

Swearing under her breath, Sara dragged her partner back toward the ladder. "I don't remember hearing you call it out."

"That's cause you were too busy laying there scaring me. I thought he'd snapped your neck."

Jake's voice held a note of grief, which she decided to ignore in favor of the more pressing question, "How long was I out?"

"Long enough," There was something in his voice that put Sara on alert.

"What happened while I was down?"

"Nothing!" The protest was given too quickly.

"My ass," Sara retorted.

"I saw something… " Jake trailed off, then said more firmly, as if convincing himself, "It had to have been from the fever. I must have been getting sick and the double shift and the cold down here just made it worse."

"Oh no, Detective. You were not sick when you came here, but you are very ill now. Perhaps you will even die." The voice was filled with mock-concern.

Jake stiffened against her, obviously upset at the words. Sara growled, "Don't listen to him. He doesn't know anything."

"I know things to make your flesh hump! To make your hair turn white!" The voice was deeper, harsher now. "I know starving bodies sick, broken babies thick. I know what fresh blood tastes like when it's still warm. The sound a man makes while his skin is peeled away."

The words were horribly familiar. Father DelToro, a true devil in priest's clothing, had said the same thing. Pushing the sudden spike of fear aside, Sara replied with false bravado, "Ooooh, scary. What do you think Jake, did I hit a nerve?"

"Definitely," was all Jake got out before he began shivering. His teeth were chattering, yet, if anything, he was hotter than before.

"Look at his eyes, so yellow." Tones modulated back into false sympathy, "The Fever is taking him fast, isn't it?"

"What are you talking about?" Sara snapped, but a quick glance showed her partner's corneas were no longer white. "What's wrong with his eyes?"

"Yellow Fever, of course."

"Where would he get Yellow Fever from?" Disbelief colored her response. The mosquitoes that carried the disease had been eradicated from the United States at least a hundred years ago.

"Sara, Sara, Sara, I am disappointed in you. How can a born New Yorker not know where she is?"

"Judging from the slant of the stairs we came down, I'd say we're under the edge of the park." Sara said with a shrug of her free shoulder, ignoring Jake's hissed inquiry as to how the other man had known her name. "So what?"

"Twenty two thousand dead of the Fever, lying all around her, and she says so what." He laughed and stepped out of the darkness.

"Yellow Fever doesn't come from corpses, especially not from three hundred year old ones, it comes from mosquitoes."

"Ah yes, my second favorite plague carriers." Dreads bobbled around his face as he nodded reminiscently. "Only rats are more efficient. Had a lovely time with them in the Middle Ages. But it still begs the question of how the mosquitoes were infected with the virus in the first place."

"I'm sure you're just dying to tell me," Sara curled up a lip, trying to hide the cold creeping down her spine.

There was just something wrong with the ratty homeless man speaking with the sophisticated inflections of the very wealthy. For a moment Sara could almost see Kenny's head on top of the tattered figure. Mr. Irons would be appalled by the comparison. She'd have to make a point to share the image with him; he should blow a gasket.

"I am hardly the one that will be dying," The old man cocked his head; eyes turned a solid, gleaming yellow by some trick of the light.

"No, you'll be the one going to jail for a long, long, time." It was difficult to carry off the boast while slowly backing away, but Sara did her best. The effort was mostly for Jake's benefit anyway. Can't look chicken in front of the rookie.

"You threaten me with mortal constraint? I thought you had learned just how effective such things were after the lamentable loss of poor Edward Nolan."

Sara didn't need another vision to understand what was going on. The body might be different, but Sara had no doubt about what she was facing now. The Evil that had worn the face of Father DelToro had returned through a new channel. "Be gone, Satan! O, Inventor and master of all deceit, enemy of man's salvation. Be gone!"

"What did I tell you about listening to old wives' tales?" The possessed man smiled, his mouth stretching past anything human. The rest of his face followed suit, twisting into a demonic shape that was all the more disturbing for the remaining elements of humanity.

"Holy shit!" Jake gasped.

"You're half right," Sara muttered darkly. "Can you climb?"

"And leave you down here with that thing?" Jake was appalled.

"I've kicked his ass before. This time won't be any different," Sara gritted her teeth and wedged Jake against the side of the ladder and the wall.

"You what?" Jake's disbelieving stare bounced between Sara and the smiling demon.

Sara bit her lip and wondered how much to say. Jake had already seen things she didn't want him to, and there was only so long she could keep him in the dark completely. Maybe a bit of truth now, in a situation so bizarre that he could never tell anyone about it, and be believed, was the best time to see how he would jump. If he reacted badly, she could always blame anything he remembered on delirium.

"Remember what you said about Father DelToro?" Sara paused to see if he was following her. He was. So far, so good," You were more right than you knew. He was a devil quoting scripture. I took care of him and I can take care of this one too."

"Do you really think that you're a match for me, Sara Pezzini?" The demon chuckled at her naiveté.

"Yeah, I do." Sara said decisively, and then hissed to Jake, "Start climbing."

"No," Jake set his jaw stubbornly. Partners took care of each other. What would happen to her if he left?

"I'm not arguing with you about this. I can't be worried about you and fight at the same time. Up the ladder, McCarty," Sara shot him a look that promised dire things if he disobeyed. "Now!"

Jake put his hands on the rungs, responding automatically to the tone of command. He rested his forehead on the blessedly cool metal and wondered if Sara wasn't right. He was in no shape to fight, and he wasn't even sure how one fought something like this anyway. Demon battling wasn't something taught in Sunday School, and that had been a long time ago anyway.

At least if he got out of here he could call for backup.

With that thought to spur him onward, Jake began the ascent, muscles trembling. He felt so weak. What the Hell was wrong with him? He was not a native, and wasn't at all sure what they had been talking about. The only Yellow Fever he had ever heard of was a spot on CNN about the troubles in Africa. They couldn't possibly be the same thing. Could they?


	5. Chapter 5

As Jake's feet disappeared from view, Sara raised her arm, fist up. The Witchblade shifted on her wrist, tendrils of metal streaming out from the dainty bracelet until gleaming silver covered her from elbow to fingertips.

"How festive. Just imagine what that would look like with tinsel hanging from it," The possessed man curled a lip and raised both hands in response, their position mockingly similar.

He turned his palms toward each other and an orb the color of old bones appeared between them. The sphere grew larger and deepened in hue, until it touched the edges of his palms, but gave off no more light. He flung his arms forward, sending the ball of sullen yellow straight at the detective's chest.

At a thought from Sara a blade shot forward from the Gauntlet. She slashed the incoming orb, expecting it to dissipate or be knocked aside. Instead, it shattered like glass, releasing the yellowish smoke from inside. The cloud settled over her face and, although she tried not to, Sara breathed some of it in.

Her throat burned like acid, the choking coughs as she tried to expel it from her lungs shook her whole body and brought tears to her eyes. Sara had a horrified second to realize this had to be what had happened to Jake before the next spasm drove all thought away on a white burst of pain.

She was so cold. The shivering started, and Sara knew that she was infected.

"It is written that the net is spread in vain before the eyes of them that have wings, but I have not found it to be so." The demon gestured behind him to the angel. "He was caught nearly as easily as you and your partner were."

The Witchblade was burning as sharply as her chest, heat radiating upward. She knew the spreading warmth was burning away the infection. Sara played for time, trying to pull herself together for an attack. "What's," She had to pause, cough, and try again, "What's with him anyway?"

"He came to save you all, but Angels are not what they used to be." He tutted with disapproval, "I should be insulted."

"But you're not," Sara wheezed, a quiet outrage building in her soul. An Angel, a real, honest to God Angel had thought this city worth protecting. Worth dying for. To hear that sacrifice belittled infuriated her.

The creature gave a dismissive flap of his hands. "He was new to his wings. I am certain that all he saw was that I was running, so he gave chase. I could never have suckered Gabriel or Michael down into unhallowed ground with that trick."

"Unhallowed?" Sara found she could straighten without her chest muscles spasming. If she could just keep him talking…

"Oh I'm sorry, word to big for you?" Condescension dripped from every word. "Means unholy."

"I got that part. Word-a-Day calendar," Sara grinned depreciatingly. Anything to keep this bastard distracted while she regained her strength. "What I meant was; how is this ground unholy? It's under a frigging park."

"It is a park now, but before that it was a place of public executions. During the War for Independence it was the locus of many atrocities, committed by both sides. Oh, and we must not forget how it all began. Once this was a mass burial site, for those taken by the great Yellow Fever epidemic of 1692. So many souls unshriven, dumped in the ground without blessing or regard by those were yet healthy enough to do so, which made them doubly mine."

During his little soliloquy, Sara edged forward, gathering herself. When she was close enough, she sprang forward, Blade aimed at the demon's heart. He danced aside, her weapon catching the edge of his ragged shirt, and nothing more.

"Still some fight in you I see. Excellent." The demon raised his hands, fingers lengthening and thickening into curved talons. "We can have some fun before you die."

"I'm not going to die," Sara croaked; voice still raw. "Asshole."

"You have breathed Death itself. The outcome is inevitable."

Sara didn't bother to reply. Let him think she was weaker than she was. She faked a stumble, shaking her head as if to clear her vision. Arrogantly convinced of his power, the demon lunged, just like she had expected. The Blade swung out in a glittering arc, opening his arm from wrist to elbow.

The demon fell back, yellow ichor oozing from his wound. "You little bitch."

Sara just smiled at the insult, which drove the creature into a fury. His talons lengthened into something more like knives. He charged, claws leading, wound forgotten. The brunette parried his first swing, expecting to slice through the talons as easily as she had his arm, but with a teeth-jarring screech reminiscent of metal on stone, she found herself wrong.

Suddenly she was faced with two sets of very long, very sharp claws and only one weapon of her own to block with. Reduced to defensive parries, Sara continued to fall back. He was pushing her away from the ladder, and she knew it, but there was nothing for it. Every dodge took her farther away from the only exit.

Something bumped against her calves and she fell backward with a curse. Instead of cold stone, she landed on something slightly softer and warmer. "Oh my God," Sara gasped as she struggled to get up. She had fallen across the poor, dead Angel.

Certain that she was committing sacrilege; Sara pushed off the muscular chest and managed to stand. She didn't get very far. A plait of brown had separated from its weave around the Angel's ankle and twined around her own.

"Oh look, the captain likes you," The demon chuckled mockingly, standing just out of reach and back in control of himself.

"Capt-" The Witchblade cut her off mid-question, showing a man standing on the deck of some old wooden ship.

The vision expanded to show the captain directing his crew as they packed the cargo holds with prisoners. Sara could see a few blondes and a grey bearded sailor. She looked down at the bonds again and felt her stomach lurch. This wasn't just hair, somehow their souls were trapped inside as well.

"He's the one that made this all possible. He stuffed his holds with slaves, exposing them to the most horrible conditions, without a thought for anything save profit. On his last trip, one of the Darkies was a shaman." The demon paused as if savoring a particularly pleasant memory.

"I never would have had a chance at a soul that pure, but after he watched his people die around him from neglect and the Fever, he was ripe for the picking. I promised him the power to take vengeance, and he accepted. Using his shell as a conduit, I spread the fever that had killed so many of his tribe." He smiled, showing teeth serrated like a shark's.

"Now I'm going to do it again. Only this time, I will not need mosquitoes. My current host was one of several exposed to an illicit testing of the airborne version of the virus. I made him the same offer as the shaman, and he accepted. If I had not been interrupted by that celestial pest, I would have fulfilled my part of the bargain and gone on to infect half the city already."

"Break the circle," the voice was so soft Sara almost didn't hear it under the demon's bragging.

She looked down and saw the faintest gleam of blue from under the filmy yellow that clouded the Angel's eyes. He wasn't dead! Hope filled her chest and drove away the strange lethargy she hadn't even realized she was feeling. Sara dipped her knees and hacked at the odd symbols carved in the floor.

The demon screeched in denial, the tone damn near high enough to break glass, but he was too late. The circle was broken. Totally grossed out by the human hair shackling her boot, Sara took a swing at that too. It parted with a very human scream, but that didn't stop her from sawing at the rest of the Angel's bonds.

Freed to act, Sara had expected the Angel to pull a flaming sword from somewhere and attack. Instead he swiped a hand over his mouth, making his palm red with the blood he had coughed up. He moved forward with deliberate grace, his good wing folded behind him and the broken one hissing over stone.

The demon backed away from that red hand, as if it were the flaming sword Sara had envisioned, his claws coming up in a defensive position. With startling speed, the Angel darted past the upraised talons and laid his palm over the demon's heart.

"Father, heal this man, and grant him Your forgiveness, for he has been led astray." The Angel's voice held the ring of far off trumpets. White light spread from his hand over the possessed man, covering the two completely in a celestial glow.

When the light faded, Sara was staring at a completely different tableau. There was no trace of the demon. The homeless man stood there, tears of joy or loss, she wasn't sure which, streaming down his face.

"The sickness has left you, you will live. Go with God," The Angel said as he stepped back, "Remember the lessons you have learned this day."

The homeless man nodded and stumbled toward the ladder while Sara stared at them both in disbelief. He damn near killed an Angel, had been a willing vessel of Evil, and he was getting off? She moved to intercept him, with every intention of arresting the man.

"Let him go, Sara Pezzini."

"But…"

"He stumbled upon the Path." The Angel shrugged his good shoulder, "Who has not? Extend to him the same chance you would wish for yourself, were you picking yourself up from a painful fall."

"But,"

"Justice untempered by Mercy is Tyranny. Do not forget that," the Angel looked at her sadly. "Others have paid the price for your love of Justice before all else. Have you even spared a thought for your ailing partner?"

Sara flinched under the rebuke.

"As the demon has fled his host, so too must I depart." The Angel tugged a primary from his broken wing, the feather edged with blood. "Lay this over your partner's lips, and he will be healed."

"What about you?" Sara asked, eying the broken wing and bloody chest.

The Angel did not answer. He closed his eyes and was surrounded by the same light as before. When it faded there was a young man in a tattered angel costume. The chicken feathers didn't even come close to the gleaming white of the feather still in her hand.

"What happened?" The blonde looked around in confusion.

"What do you remember?"

"I was coming home from doing our church's nativity play. There was a man, he was sick? Hurt? Anyway, there was blood everywhere. I stopped to help him, praying that I wasn't too late, and then nothing." He raised confused blue eyes to hers, "What happened to him?"

"You were in time," Sara curved a lip at the understatement. "Wait right here for a minute, I need to check on my partner."

Sara rushed up the ladder, hoping she would be in time. She found Jake halfway up the steps, passed out at the pink bunny-slippered feet of what had to be the property manager. She turned him over, wincing at the thin trickle of blood coming from his mouth. She laid the feather over his lips without a thought for what the woman would think of it.

The feather melted like frost and Jake opened his eyes. They were bright blue again, no trace of yellow anywhere.

"Oh thank God," Sara whispered, realizing with a start how long it had been since she had uttered that sentence and really meant it.


End file.
